V'hlas looked over the information in his hand, nonchalantly tossing the padd to the floor.
Good news indeed it was, the Romulan Empire was expanding rapidly. The only real powers left in the quadrant were the Klingons and Andorians. But V'hlas was confident Romulus would succeed, under his guiding hand, of course.
Mining of Vulcans surface would commence within the hour. V'hlas had conquered the desert planet, and he was determined to get every ounce of valuable mineral off it. Of course Vulcan would be useless to him once they had depleted the planets resources, considering they were no longer the major power they had been. He would probably just order it destroyed, however, you could never tell when having some extra hands might be helpful. His mind continued scheming, reveling in the power that was to be his…
Aboard the Enterprise:
The chemist had needed no more encouragement. After a brief discussion following the aliens beating, Captain Tucker had procured the necessary information. Considering, however, it was correct. But with nothing else to go on, the Enterprise headed towards a supposed Xindi outpost, Azati Prime…
"Anything yet Travis?" Trip couldn't help but fidget, this was the most crucial phase of the plan, well, besides destroying the Romulan fleet, it definitely ranked up there.
"No Sir, I'm not reading anything, no life, no power sources, nothing." Travis wasn't surprised though, he'd doubted the authenticity of their "hunch" since the minute they told him to lay in a course.
Trip sighed, fuck. Now they were running low on supplies, in the middle of nowhere, and had no goddamned idea where the Xindi were. Things couldn't get much worse.
"Sir somethings happening, it-, I-, I can't really explain it Sir."
Shit, spoke to soon. "Try Ensign". Trip couldn't help but notice the underlying panic in the helmsman's voice.
"Well Sir, it looks like a wormhole is opening, but, I should've detected that earlier Captain".
"Forward viewers on" Trip commanded. He had a bad feeling they were gonna have some company.
True to form, the wormhole closed behind 4 ships. No human had ever seen a Xindi, or at least lived to talk about it. They didn't even know ship configurations, and so had no way to tell if these were Xindi vessels.
They hadn't shot yet, Trip hoped to hell that was a good sign. "Open a hailing frequency".
The crewman at Hoshi's old post was a little new, and it took him a couple seconds to locate and press the appropriate buttons. "They can hear you Captain".
Trip took a calming breath, attempting to cleanse his mind of all the doubt and apprehension. Oh fuck we're screwed!
"This is Captain Tucker of the human starship Enterprise, we come in peace." Trip hoped these aliens weren't aware of that particular cliché, it would also help if they were actually the Xindi.
The screen before them was suddenly filled with the visage of a green scaled, lizard, or something like that.
"This is Dolovik representing the Xindi High Council, this is claimed space, you have 3 minutes to leave before we open fire."
Trip just sat there, formulating whatever the fuck it was he was supposed to do. There was no way he could just leave, No Shit! And that was it, wasn't it. He had to do this, well, damn, at least try.
And he might well be inviting the wrath of these overgrown salamanders, but fuck it. "Ensign, send them these coordinates."
As the numbers lined up on his console, the Ensign had no clue as to what was going on, but forwarded the coordinates as ordered…